SAN FRANCISCO -- As the families of the two girls killed in the Asiana Airlines crash went through the heartbreaking task of formally identifying their children, new details emerged about cockpit confusion along with the astounding revelation that two flight attendants survived after also being ejected from the disintegrating aircraft.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman on Tuesday described the chaos of the final seconds before and after Saturday's crash of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning.

Among the details she revealed were that two flight attendants who were seated in the back of the plane were thrown onto the tarmac in the crash.

"They were found down the runway and off to the side of the runway," Hersman told reporters. "Those flight attendants survived, but they obviously have gone through a serious event."

Additionally, it was learned that the pilots controlling the plane at the time of the crash had never flown together before, and, owing to a transnational policy quirk, none of the flight crewmen were screened for drug or alcohol use afterward, which would have been standard for American pilots.

Hersman told reporters that three of the four pilots have given interviews to investigators and are cooperating. The fourth, "a relief captain" was sitting in the cabin during the crash and was being interviewed on Tuesday, Hersman said.

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The pilot sitting in the left seat during the crash, Lee Kang-kuk, was making his maiden landing at SFO in a Boeing 777 and has 9,700 hours of flight time, including about 5,000 hours as "pilot in command," Hersman said. His "instructor pilot," Lee Jung-min, was sitting in the right seat.

In another development, reporters asked Hersman about reports that one of the two 16-year-old girls who were killed had taken off her seat belt just before the crash.

Hersman said investigators still need to review the flight manifest and seat configurations to determine where everyone was sitting during the crash -- and will look to see whether any of the original seat belts had been modified.

She also addressed criticisms from pilot union representatives objecting to her revealing information that strongly hinted at pilot error. She said pilots are entitled to advocates, but so are flyers.

"We work for the traveling public," Hersman said. "We are the advocate for the traveling public."

At the same time, she cautioned anyone against drawing conclusions about pilot error before the investigation is completed.

"We will not determine probable cause while we're here on scene, only after we've collected all the information and analyzed it," Hersman said.

Earlier in the day, Asiana Airlines Chief Executive Yoon Young-doo arrived in San Francisco to meet with U.S. investigators and survivors of the Saturday plane crash that killed two people and injured more than 180.

Yoon was approached by a group of about 50 reporters, but he quickly moved away without making comment.

When Hersman talked to reporters Tuesday morning, she said her team is working to arrange the removal and relocation of the Boeing 777 jetliner's fuselage and surrounding debris in the span of week's time, though that was an admittedly optimistic estimate.

At at news conference later that day, Hersman said pilot interviews revealed that the pilot who was flying the plane and the pilot was training him were flying together for the first time on Flight 214.

The lead pilot had completed only half the training he needed to be "rated" to fly the Boeing 777. She said the pilots were all cooperative, but that interviews were slowed by the need for translators.

She also said the pilots were not tested to see if they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the crash because such testing is not required under South Korean policies. U.S.-based crews are required to test for drugs or and alcohol after crashes. However, federal authorities defer to a carrier's home country.

Meanwhile, the parents of Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, who killed in the crash and were part of a youth group visiting colleges including Stanford and attending a Southern California church summer camp, arrived in San Francisco overnight. Parents of other students also arrived. They were quickly whisked away to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Burlingame, where they were shielded from the media by people with umbrellas.

Because the parents are being housed there, the hotel area has been declared a "federal zone" and ID checks were being conducted on anyone trying to get inside. Media assembled a short distance away and were not allowed to enter.

A security detail consisting of Burlingame police, the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office and federal authorities -- including the NTSB -- watched all entry points of the hotel.

Throughout the morning, people, some of whom appear to have been involved in the crash, were deftly whisked away from the compound in cars with the windows tinted.

Both authorities and the hotel management went to great lengths to shield their faces from news cameras peering across a chain-link fence separating the property from an adjacent public park. In one instance, staff again opened a volley of large umbrellas to obscure people leaving the hotel. In another, buses were used to obscure the sight lines to the entrance.

Every once in a while, someone would peer out and dart back in, but for the most part the contingent was effective in protecting the privacy of those inside.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 19 people from Flight 214 remain in Bay Area hospitals.

Five people are still at Stanford Hospital, one in critical but stable condition, two in fair condition and two in good condition, according to the hospital.

Three patients were discharged from hospital Monday night.

Stanford Hospital saw 55 patients from the flight on Saturday, 11 adults were admitted to the hospital and seven minors were admitted to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. The seven juveniles were released Sunday night.

Twelve people remain hospitalized Tuesday morning at San Francisco General Hospital, five in critical condition -- four adults and one child, according to the hospital. A sixth patient who had been listed in critical condition was upgraded to fair condition.

In all, San Francisco General treated 62 people from the crash. Of the 12 who are still at the hospital, three are children and nine are adults.

Two other people from Flight 214 were in other Bay Area hospitals as of Tuesday afternoon, one in stable condition at St. Francis Hospital and the other in stable condition at St. Mary's Hospital, according to a spokeswoman for Dignity Health Hospitals.

Pilot Lee Kang-kuk was attempting his first landing at SFO in a Boeing 777. He had 43 hours of experience flying a plane that pilots call "The Triple 7," and reportedly had more than 10,000 hours flying another large plane, the Boeing 747.

The senior pilot, Lee Jung-min, had just received his training certificate in June, Asiana Airlines officials told reporters Monday, allowing him to supervise other pilots in training.

Witnesses along the Peninsula shoreline watched in horror as the jetliner's tail slammed into the sea wall that abuts SFO's Runway 28L on a crystal-clear Saturday morning, sending the plane careening down the runway before it burst into flames.

Of the 307 people on the Asiana flight, 182 were taken to hospitals by rescue workers. Authorities are investigating whether one of the 16-year-old girls who died was run over by an emergency vehicle responding to the crash, subsequent fire and mass casualty evacuation.

According to preliminary findings from the NTSB, the plane was traveling too low and was below its targeted landing speed of 137 knots, or 157 mph. Seven seconds before impact, the crew called for an increase in speed, cockpit alerts soon warned of an impending stall, and 1.5 seconds before impact, they tried to abort the landing and try again, but it was tragically too late.

Aviation experts told this newspaper that the timeline outlined by authorities indicates the pilot may have turned off a system that automatically controls the airplane's thrust -- called "auto thrust" or "auto throttle" -- that would have maintained the plane's target landing speed without the pilot having to do anything more.

Tuesday Hersman elaborated, saying the training pilot recognized that auto throttles were not maintaining the target landing speed and he decided to to pull back up and redo the landing.

Experts said that with the auto thrust off, the engines would have been idling.

It takes 5 to 7 seconds or more for the massive Pratt & Whitney engines to power up from the idle mode, experts said. When a crew member called for more speed, it was far too late to recover.

Despite the preponderance of preliminary findings strongly suggesting pilot error, Hersman said the investigation -- conducted by the NTSB, FBI and Korean transportation officials -- would not draw any conclusions in the short term.

Hersman said the auto throttles were armed, which meant they were available to be engaged, but that investigators "need to understand how they were used."

As the plane crashed, the aircraft, Hersman said, turned counter-clockwise and did a full spin before coming to rest on the tarmac.

Sections of the cabin were scattered on the field where the plane rested, along with newspapers, magazines and flooring.

Passengers raced to get out of plane and away from a fire started in part after an oil tank ruptured and leaked fuel onto the hot engine.

In an incident that caused a scare in light of the deadly crash, Japan Airlines reported that one of its Boeing 777s returned to Tokyo after a hydraulic warning light flashed about four hours into a trip to SFO. The 236 passengers boarded another plane and arrived at SFO early Tuesday morning.